Initially, Travis County said it could accept housing assistance applications through September, but staff now says they will likely close the program this month after receiving so many applications. | AKMcGlinchy
Travis County last week reopened a program with millions of dollars in funding to help people make their rent and mortgage payments. Initially the county said it could accept applications through September, but staff now says they will likely close the program this month because they’ve received so many applications.At a meeting Tuesday, staff attributed the large interest in the program to rapidly rising housing prices in the county that contains Austin.
Officials did not set a hard deadline for closing the program to applications, but instead decided to cap the number of applications at 4,500. They expect to reach this number in the next several days. The news came amid a veritable desert of aid for people who had fallen behind on housing payments. Currently, rent help programs from the state and the City of Austin are closed after both jurisdictions ran out of money over the past few months.
“This is just a brand new environment,” Siegfried told county commissioners Tuesday. She said the county did not see such a demand for help paying for housing when it offered several rounds of rent assistance funds during the pandemic. “[During those programs] we did not get 3,000 applications in three days, which is essentially what happened here.”